- This topic has 13 replies, 9 voices, and was last updated Sep 1, 2015 5:41pm by
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Basically what the title says. Now that Oculus has said that they’re dropping the extended mode for good, are there any plans to move vorpx over to direct mode?
Quoted from a similar thread a few days ago:
For an end user it will definitely be a good idea not to install the 0.7 runtime on day one. This newly announced Direct Driver Mode sounds a lot more intriguing than the current direct mode though, so I guess many apps, including vorpX, will adapt soon.
Well the question I’m wondering is that vorpX was pretty much based off of extended… now that 0.7 runtime requires direct only and not just direct but must be set up specifically for 0.7 (older direct to rift isn’t working on some apps)… and nearly every game will have to be reconfigured… so it might take weeks if not months for a 0.7 version.
So my suggestion is if 0.6 is working for you, don’t get 0.7 just yet unless you are okay with vorpx being non functional for the moment.
On a side note, why is Oculus trying to destroy the community every time they release a new runtime that says nothing previous will work with it. Surely people will get fed up of making things for us to try out soon.
I’d like to add that all in all this is an unfortunate decision. They cleverly sell it as being progress (and most people seem to believe that), but in fact removing extended mode just means taking something away that didn’t hurt anyone. It would be no problem to have the new direct driver mode and still leave extended mode as an option. I wouldn’t be surprised if this would be at least as much a business decision as it is a technical one.
vorpX will work with direct mode with the next release, but there is a price to pay in regard to higher resource consumption: a few megs of additional texture memory are needed and also an additional processing step, which costs some always precious GPU cycles.
I get the feeling that Oculus won’t be top dog for long. Like people have said every time they “update” it seems to break everything prior. Everyone thought hey Facebook has money, it should be able to thrust Oculus forward. Now it seems the buyout didn’t really do much other then make Lucky a rich man. That’s cool and all, but Oculus has used their 15 min up. The whole hey we need developers bit has run out at this point and a lot of buzz has died out. I think Sony if they do it right could become the VR headset front runner. The valve set looks good too but may end up being a little too techy for your average user. All in all Oculus started out with the best intentions. Now it really seems they try to cover the lack of progress by forcefully implementing “features” without proper support from the company. I know its them trying to push forward, but if everystep forward leaves all the people moving with you broken and stranded, then you may run out of people to help push.
I think that removing extended is a good thing and something that we all knew would happen eventually regardless, so why not get it out of the way now rather than later? I understand it’s a pain in the ass to deal with and I’m happy I don’t have anything in active development that needs updating at the moment, but contrary to what you are stating about things running worse Ralf, there isn’t a program I have tried that doesn’t run better, out of everything I have found working for 0.7 so far.
If it works why so fast to remove it? I get what you mean, they push forward even if it shakes up what’s been done. That can be a good thing, a great thing. But unless they have something cooked up that really works then removing things feels odd. Unless you have a solution don’t clip the cord just for the sake of clipping. If its going to change in the next 3 updates then they should hold back. If something sort of works and you want to replace it with something that sort of works, that’s not moving forward. That’s just changing out one wrong thing for another. They have a ton of talent in their ranks so they should be able to come up with a solution that works and is easy adaptable for people helping push their product. Think of oculus as the company version of a child star. They take off big, lots of fame-hype.. Then if they don’t watch it it becomes too much too fast. Companies can become bloated and the corporate structure can begin to have negative effects on what they call progress. Anyway I hope they get it down and everybody can be happy and have fun when it comes out.
@ Ainaemaet: what you say is true for most, if not all, native apps, where the developers have control over the rendering pipeline from start to finish. But not necessarily for an injection driver where this introduces the need for an additional rendering step. For DX10/11 that may be avoidable, which is being investigated right now, for DX9 it’s not.
Due to the SDK timewarp post processing you won’t notice that in the end, but personally I would prefer the maximum raw rendering performance for vorpX without having to rely on now largely opaque SDK processing.
Apart from that there were enough people who had issues getting direct mode to work at all on their machines in the past that completely removing a working fallback seems at least bold to me. There was no real need to do that. I don’t want to speculate too much, but I could well imagine that making things tougher for smaller head mounted display vendors played as much a role in this decision as the wish to provide the best possible user experience.
I think we need to remember the words “Oculus Store” As with the GearVr you can’t make demo’s for the mass as it is coded to your phone unless you go through the store and they take their cut, I imagine the Rift going exactly the same way. Arsebiscuits I feel is an apt account of the company’s worth…
Thanks though Ralf that you are continuing to build on an already awesome driver. I’m very happy to hear you can still work with it.
Not going to miss extended mode in the long run, its pain to use while trying launch games etc. But I did have to do a second windows install to run the older sdk so I can run those older rift applications and obviously use vorpx there until the new version comes out.
You wont be required to sell your games and software through the Oculus Store for the PC. They have have already publicly stated so. It smart to sell games through distribution platforms like the Oculus Store and Steam because they function as advertising, hosting and DRM for your your game but you can sell as many places as you want. Also side-loading on the Gear VR isn’t impossible. Its already been done with SideloadVR.
Hi Ralf,
You say in your post (#89585) that Direct Mode will be supported in your next release. Do you have a time frame currently?
J.
Nothing I can share yet. Please keep in mind that there weren’t even two full working days yet since the 0.7 release.
As said earlier, for an end user it’s a lot better to stay at runtime 0.6 for the time being, which also has direct mode, but still supports extended mode for everything that requires it. Currently you lose a lot more than you gain when you install the 0.7 runtime.
I will let you know as soon as there is anything to tell, of course.
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